Custom antibody development

We offer world-leading antibody development platforms based on a proprietary RabMAb® rabbit monoclonal platform, a phage display platform (AxioMx), and a next-generation sequencing platform (NGS-RabMAb®)

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Isotype, western blotting and lysate loading controls

In order to evaluate any experiment, it is important to include both appropriate positive and negative controls in your experimental design. To make this task easier Abcam offers a large selection of ready-to-use controls.

Isotype controls are used to confirm that the primary antibody binding is specific and not a result of non-specific Fc receptor binding or other protein interactions. The isotype control antibody should match the primary antibody’s host species, isotype, and conjugation. Our monoclonal and polyclonal isotype loading controls are tested in various applications such as western blotting, flow cytometry and ELISA and come from a variety of species:

The main use of loading controls is in western blotting: to ensure that the lanes in your gel contain the same amount of sample and that the transfer onto the membrane was equal. Especially, when a comparison is made between the expression of a protein in different samples, a loading control is absolutely essential. Apart from western blotting, loading controls are essential to confirm that alterations in protein levels are due to an effective "knock-out" or "knock-down" and not just due to general changes in gene expression or protein synthesis.

If you would like to detect a protein for the first time on a western blot and you do not know if and when the protein is expressed, it is advisable to include a positive control. Abcam lysates make great positive controls as the proteins present in our lysates are well documented and you can choose from over 2100 products from a variety of tissue types, species, and disease states:

293T transfected - over 300 lysates transfected with different immunology, cardiovascular and apoptosis markers - such as annexin-V

Cytoplasmic - over 160 lysates from various tissues including brain, breast, colon, ovaries, pancreas and heart